When he decided to publish David
Irving'sbiography
of Nazi propaganda overlord Joseph Goebbels,
St. Martins
Press publisher Thomas
Dunne says, he had no idea
that Irving is one of the world's most prominent deniers of
the Holocaust.

Nor did he know that advance reviewers -- famous for
their gentle notices -- would denounce the book as
"scurrilously misleading" (Kirkus
Reviews) and "repellent" (Publishers
Weekly). Or that best-selling author Jonathan
Kellerman would be so repulsed by St. Martin's decision
that he'd instruct the publisher not to seek endorsement
blurbs from him anymore.

Some historians and fellow publishers scoff at the notion
that St. Martin's, which annually publishes 650 books on a
broad range of topics, could have been ignorant of Irving's
politics. Irving -- who routinely refers to the Holocaust as
a "hoax" -- is a hero to neo-Nazis worldwide.[1]
His speeches spark demonstrations that attract widespread
news coverage; his legal
battles are equally infamous.

See IRVING, D3 Co1 1

April 3, 1996

Illustrations added by this
Website.

The Washington Post, April 3 1996, page D3

Hitler Apologist's
Mainstream Publisher

IRVING, From D1

Irving, who is English, has been banned from Germany,
Australia,
and Canada. In
Germany he has been convicted of incitement to race
hatred[2],
libel and defamation of the memory of the dead -- a law
prohibiting denial of the Holocaust.

In Britain, he has denounced black participation in
cricket leagues and called for "the destruction of the state
of Israel."[3]

But while Irving, who calls himself a "moderate
fascist,"[4]
is a pariah among historians,[5]
he remains a star on the Holocaust denial lecture circuit.
There, he rails against Jews[6]
and the truth of the Nazi genocide, calling it a "blood
lie." He argues that there were never gas chambers at
Auschwitz; instead, he says, they were built after the war
by Poland as a "tourist attraction."

The Anti-Defamation
League of B'nai
B'rith wrote to St. Martin's expressing
astonishment that "an institution of your
prominence and reputation will publish and promote
as serious scholarship" a work by Irving.

"In the Passover Hagadah, it says in every
generation there are those who rise up to destroy
us," said Deborah
Lipstadt, professor of Jewish and Holocaust
studies at Emory University and author of
"Denying the Holocaust: The
Growing Assault on Truth and Memory." "David
Irving is not physically destroying us, but is
trying to destroy the memory of those who have
already perished at the hands of tyrants."

St. Martin's agreed to publish "Goebbels" only
after several other companies rejected the
manuscript. "I would say half the editors I
discussed this project with rejected it without
even reading it," said Irving's agent, Ed
Novak. "They said, "I'm not interested in
reading something by him."

"In
the Passover Hagadah, it says in every generation
there are those who rise up to destroy us," said
Deborah
Lipstadt,
professor of Jewish and Holocaust studies at Emory
University and author of "Denying the Holocaust:
The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory." "David
Irving is not physically destroying us, but is
trying to destroy the memory of those who have
already perished at the hands of
tyrants."

This publisher had no such compunction, Novak said. "St.
Martin's saw this as a good book by an author with a good
sales record. They thought they could make some money off
it, and I'm pretty sure they will." Novak would not disclose
what St. Martin's paid Irving, but said he "gets more for
the kind of books he writes than most historians."

Dunne stands by his decision to print the biography.

"I have been told [in recent weeks] that Mr.
Irving is at the center of much controversy of late and has
been accused -- and I do not know if this is true or not --
of denying the holocaust." Dunne wrote in a press release,
"Joseph Goebbels is doubtless laughing in hell. He, after
all, was the man, after all, was the man who loved nothing
better than burning books, threatening publishers,
suppressing ideas, and judging the merits of ideas based not
on their content but by their author's racial, ethnic, or
political purity. That is indeed a sad irony."

Dunne contends that publishers ought not consider the
"loyalties, politics or personal lives" of their authors.
But many historians outraged at the scheduled May
publication of "Goebbels" say a publisher indeed should care
who writes books.

"They say they don't publish reputations, they publish
books," Lipstadt said. "But would they publish a book by
Jeffrey Dahmer on man-boy
relationships?[7]
Of course the reputation of the author counts. And no
legitimate historian takes David Irving's work
seriously."

Novak, Irving's agent, dismisses the idea that by
printing a book, a publisher vouches for the author's
credibility. "When Little, Brown published O.J.
Simpson's book last year, that argument went out the
door," Novak said.

Last year, after Warner Books canceled plans to publish a
book by Frederick Lenz, the controversial "yuppie
guru" known as Zen Master Rama, St. Martin's immediately
picked up "Surfing the Himalayas," which became a
bestseller. Warner had dropped the book because of
allegations that Lenz engaged in cult activity and sexual
improprieties; a St. Martin's spokesman then told
Publishers Weekly, "We're
publishing the book, not the man."

In defense of the Goebbels biography, Dunne said Irving's
depiction of Hitler's propaganda minister shows him to he
"evil, satanic, monstrous."

And Michael Stephenson,
editor in chief of the Military Book Club, which will
send "Goebbels" to its members as a main selection later
this Spring, defends the book as a "very strong work of
history," according to Stuart Applebaum, spokesman
for the club and its parent, Doubleday Direct Inc.

Unlike Dunne, Stephenson was fully aware of Irving's
politics when he read the book, Applebaum said. "He
certainly judged the Goebbels book on what he read, not on
Mr. Irving's reputation.

If he saw any effort at a propaganda job, selling
Goebbels as a beneficent figure in history, Mr. Stephenson
would have rejected the book outright.

But reviewers and historians[8]
say that for all of Irving's criticism of Goebbels, the book
also contains considerable sympathy for the Nazi cause. And
it uses Goebbels antisemitism and open endorsement of
brutality to advance Irving's view of Hitler as an
ineffectual leader who had to be prodded into genocide.

The anonymous reviewer who wrote
Publishers Weekly's scathing
notice said Irving uses "pejoratives to sustain the illusion
of objectivity" about Goebbels, "yet suggests that the
admittedly bad man had a cause not entirely bad in
itself."

Irving
is the first author to gain access to the 75,000 pages of
Goebbels's diaries
[right], which lay
untouched in the Red Army's archives in Moscow until the
fall of communism.

At Kirkus Reviews, another
magazine that evaluates books for booksellers and libraries,
the review concluded that Irving's "twisted interpretations
. . . along with some selective omissions, obscure the
truth."

"Neither the broad German public nor their Fuehrer shared
[Goebbels's] satanic antisemitism," Irving wrote.
That is the message Irving has been preaching for two
decades in books and lectures.

Son of a British
naval officer who abandoned his family,[9]
Irving born in 1938, followed World War II largely through
comic book accounts.

Despite his lack of academic credentials -- he attended
the University of London but never graduated according to
British historian David Cesarani[10]
-- Irving won praise from historians for his early work. But
when his "Hitler's War' was published in 1978, Irving was
denounced for shoddy sourcing and a dishonest approach. In
1979, was forced to pay compensation to Anne
Frank's father after the German edition of
"Hitler's War" claimed the
girl's famous diary was a fraud.[11]

The late Holocaust historian Lucy Dawidowicz wrote
that Irving was a "Hitler apologist" whose "work intended to
show that Hitler was kind to his animals and to his
secretaries, that he was 'probably the weakest leader
Germany has known in this century,' and that he did not
murder the Jews or even wish to do so, but that the murder
was committed behind his back."

Irving's own family has sought to distance itself from
his actions. His daughters have denounced him; one called
him "tyrannical."[12]
His twin brother, Nicholas, changed his surname to
avoid association with David.[13]

A couple of years age, when a journalist asked Irving if
he was mad, he said: "When you are on the edge of
intellectual hyper-strain, sometimes you must say, 'Have I
flipped?' Unfortunately, there is no intellectual
thermometer you can slip in your mouth to find out."